Tuesday, April 17, 2007

More Double Standards...Live On Oprah

Yesterday Oprah had a live show focused on Imus-gate. The show was called "After Imus: Now What?" and today's show is "After Imus: The Hip Hop Community Responds"...talk about mileage.

Among her guests yesterday was the infamous Reverend Al. Another guest was Stanley Crouch of the NY Daily Post. His article about Imus and the Rutgers team said this:

"Bigoted stereotypes are always about automation: They tell you that you will always, with no variation, get a specific set of ugly characteristics from the group singled out for contempt and abuse." (source)

So he's on Oprah after writing this column, and he's passionately arguing that all stereotyping needs to be immediately punished. Then he proceeds to say, ["What if white people started saying, 'I wanna say nigger too'."] Now here's the thing...when he said it he "impersonated" a white person and used a dorky anal voice (you know, the one Eddie Murphy made famous). No one called him on it. How are you going to be on national television damning stereotypes and then perpetrate one yourself? AB called me during the show in a tizzy asking me to find Harpo's contact information online for her.

Nappy-headed just means you didn't brush/use taming products on your hair. It's not a terrible insult. Black people say it to each other all the time. I have heard the kids in my classes say it at least 10 times since this story broke. Calling them hos...now that I have a problem with. These girls should have went out, said Imus should look in the mirror because he's way more nappy-headed than any of them (made light of that to diffuse it) and then slammed him on the "ho" thing. Make it a woman's issue (because the whole team isn't even Black). Then they'd still have sympathy. Playing the race card for a sorta-insult sucked that would-be sympathy right out of most of the country.

...The double standard that grows each day this story lingers is what I have the biggest problem with.

I want to promise I won't blog about this again...but I can't. It's way too provocative.